Help for Mr. Peale - Hardcover

Barbara Morrow

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0027675904 ISBN 13: 9780027675900

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 1990

Synopsis

With the help of his son Rubens, the famous painter Charles Willson Peale finds a way to transport his natural history treasures to a new museum in Philadelphia's Philosophical Hall.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2-6-- This historical picture book hits the mark for appropriateness of narration and illustration. The story documents the establishment by Charles Willson Peale of the first American natural-history museum in the Philadelphia of 1794. The Peale family is moving, and the question is how to transport such items as a stuffed bison, large prehistoric bones, and rare plants to their new museum home six blocks away. The Peales' young son Rubens gathers the neighborhood children and organizes a parade of the natural wonders. With sufficient historical apparatus to ground the story in its Federalist setting and watercolor and pencil pictures brimming with period detail, the illustrations are vignetted on the page as though they were tipped in, framed by large white backgrounds giving the book an antique look. The quantity of detail, as well as the action of the drawings, call to mind those of Randolph Caldecott, although Morrow's line drawings here are not as fine and precise. The family's black servant is treated respectfully; his status as a slave or freeman is not clear, nor does it seem important. A lively bit of Americana. --Ruth K. MacDonald, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0027675904
• ISBN 13: 9780027675900
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32